Leader, Disrespected
by Cordogg
Summary: What Rachet thought the moment Prime's body was dropped harshly to the ground in ROTF. If you read please review! Some languege.


**This is *Rachet's* POV when Optimus was dropped like a piece of garbage from that chopper. Look, I loved ROTF. Seen it several times now, **

**but that part of the movie got under my skin. So I just had to get this off my chest in a little fic. **

**(RATCHET)**

There he was, his great body on the horizon. The twin-rotor military helicopter in the distance, bearing the sillouhette of our great leader. _Great _

_Leader_ many of us called him on our homeworld. As the chopper made it's approach I naturally expected it to slow to a hovering descent, which it

did and lower the Prime's body gently to earth.....

You see, on our homeworld, we grieve for our fallen. We do. But not in the way the humans do. Our grief is very private, never seen by outsiders,

or it's not supposed to be. The moment one of ours falls, our sparks begin to sing. I can only describe it as a horrendous pain in our chests, our

sparks thrum in unison. Matching each other's frequency. It hurts. The feeling of what humans describe to me as "crying" as they expell fluids from

their eyes in the form of "tears", which causes discomfort in their heads if they do so long enough, so goes the same for our chests. Our sparks

reacting to the sudden extinguishing of one of our own, knowing that it is no more, it rips a hole in the link of those sparks that have long since

formed a link to the doomed one. It feels as if our chest cavities might explode, how our sparks vibrate so violently. It may not show in our facial

expressions but shows in how we move, how our bodies slow down due to the enormous agony of our sparks "crying" for their lost brother or

sister. Jazz was a prime example. Do we experience sadness? Of course we do. So when we made our way to what remained of our Prime being

brought back, we were hurting. And that was when the unthinkable happened. When he hit the ground, we all flinched in pain, because of our links

to the leader's dead spark.

_I immediatedly blurted a hail of curses through my com link at the others in my native Cybertronian and then translated those words angrily into to _

_English for only my comrades to hear._

_***THE SONS OF BITCHES. THEY DROPPED HIM!!***_

I'll tell you now it is not in my nature to curse. I had never cursed before in my existence, here or on Cybertron. Even Ironhide was shocked, but

still could understand my rage. I've known him long enough to know that when he doesn't respond to my fits, he is pretty much thinking exactly

what I'm thinking. But on this particular sunset, I no longer cared what I said, or who heard me, and that went for the humans--even those who

were part of our NEST organization. From the barrage of furious Cybertronian jabber I received from the others as a reply I knew the others were

just as enraged as I was at that moment of seeing our leader so unceremoniously dumped on the tarmac. We transformed lethargically, in agony.

We learned later that the pilot of this helicopter was one of the few supporters of the new National Security advisor. So like him, this helicopter

pilot could have cared less about the condition of Optimus Prime's lifeless body. Still none of that mattered to me the moment I saw Prime's corpse

DROPPED, not carefully laid in contact with the concrete, but snapped loose from his harnesses and allowed to hit the pavement as if he was a

demolished car being let go by a large magnet. Sparks flew everywhere as his metal contacted the ground below him, further scarring his already

battle-scarred frame. Not that he could feel it but that isn't the point!

How would you humans like it if we took your President, of the United States, after finding his body, returned him to you and then dropped HIM to

the ground like that? Or any world leader or king for that matter? Opened our vehicle doors as we spun to a halt and let him fly from our interior,

to hell with whatever position he landed in. The rage swirling in me at that moment was enough to open fire on that damn air craft. I could tell by

Ironhide's transformation that he was sorely tempted to blast that helicopter from the air. At the time I wished he had done it. No, we were not

invited to Earth. And we chose to come here to live here. It WAS a privillige for us to be here, and as Optimus told Mr. Galloway, if we were asked

to leave this planet, then we would. We could spend eons in an eternal slumber in our reentry protoform states among the asteroids if we needed to.

And there was high probability for Cybertron to rebuild itself although it would take time. And, there _were_ many other worlds in the cosmos we

could inhabit. I mean other planets barren of life, unable to support other life but would be perfect for OUR survival. WE could flourish on those

empty bodies and make them like Cybertron. WE had the capability to do it, unlike these _fucking_ humans.

_YES, I cursed yet again because what I_ _just witnessed made me that infuriated_.

This human race was woefully TRAPPED here on this planet. No where near as advanced as us, if their earth planet became uninhabitable they truly

would become extinct. No other body within their technological reach would support human life. And we, transformers were not about to try to

help them find a "spare homeworld" after wanting us gone in the first place, and certainly not after how they disrespected our leader in death. For the

first time I found myself agreeing with decepticons: THIS PLANET WAS NOT WORTH SAVING.

And it didn't matter to any of us that even Lennox or Epps came to our defense when Galloway's "calvary" showed up. At that point in time, we

failed to realize how much the two of them, as well as many others there were just as incensed at the dropping of Optimus's body. They were too

shocked to "react normally". I didn't even notice when they first came out to us, or even when the motorcade of Galloway's unit pulled up as I

was focused on the helicopter disappearing into the distance. I understood at that point why Ironhide complained to Prime on the dam why we

needed to help the humans. In the two years here things seemed fine, but even Sam seemed to tire of us, according to Bumblebee's explanation

when he drove Sam to the cemetery. He thought the way Sam dismissed his guardian for college was a bit callous, it didn't seem heartfelt. He

said. I thought he was overreacting---at the time. Tsk. I guess now I can see why. Here we were trying to stop the decepticons from taking

over your precious world because you don't have the means to do it _without_ us, and this is how you repay us. By slapping our faces with Prime's

body. "We made a mess of Shanghai...", well, we are very large. We couldn't exactly control that. In the future far more people would have

died....Optimus, OUR Optimus did you a favor. He convinced us all to stay here because he firmly believed that all living things had a right to life

even if they were more primitive than us. That was one of the many traits we admired about Optimus. He made us believe that no one race was

above another. If he could see how they dropped him in death, he would still not have been angry, unlike the rest of us. I just wanted to leave

the planet at that point, but I could see Ironhide fighing it.

I began to understand that there was good and bad in everyone. Prime was right when he said we were not above the humans. We, like them,

were capable of great violence, great compassion. Many humans at the airport that day who saw Prime brought back were as upset as we were.

Sam returned forever changed and now not wanting to leave us again, ever. Even the President felt remorse, apologized to Optimus for it, for even he wasn't

aware of it. After what happened in Egypt, he decided that he wanted our race to stay. Permanently. Him and many other leaders of this world.

Optimus was disrespected, but the respect he was shown after his resurrection has more than made up for it.


End file.
